


Rain on the Window

by VSSAKJ



Category: Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: F/M, POV Second Person, Suicide Attempt, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-11-02 06:17:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20650175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VSSAKJ/pseuds/VSSAKJ
Summary: It hasn’t stopped raining in days. There’s rain when you fall into your bed, rain when you rouse—there's even a rhythmic tattoo of rain in the depth of your dreams.It hasn’t stopped raining in twenty-four days.





	Rain on the Window

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lypiphaera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lypiphaera/gifts).

> Best wishes on this Darkest Night.

You wake to the sound of rain on the window.

It hasn’t stopped raining in days. There’s rain when you fall into your bed, rain when you rouse—there's even a rhythmic tattoo of rain in the depth of your dreams. Its pattering drills into your head and moisture seeps in after it, making your skull feel swollen and overfull. It’s unseasonably wet, uncharacteristically dreary, and every day you wonder why the streets haven’t flooded with the ongoing, never ending rain.

You press your pillow into your eyes and bite back a sob, admitting to yourself: you don’t wonder. The city hasn’t flooded because this day keeps happening to you over and over again.

Wet and grey, the world reflects your mood as you swing your legs from the bed and reach to scratch another mark against your tally.

It hasn’t stopped raining in twenty-four days.

Twenty-four days of cloying grimness, clotting up your lungs and blotting the light from your eyes. The weight of it reminds you of how Darsanga crept into your bones and made you small. You curl your hands into fists and dig them into your knees; you press your forehead into your fists and hold your breath for as long as you can. The rain roars louder as you try to fold yourself into nothing, holding you in this moment with its unfaltering grip.

When you rise, it’s with a hollow emptiness inside you. You wrap yourself in your silken robe—always in the same spot, come morning, no matter where you leave it—and descend the stairs, chewing the inside of your lip. You don’t know how much longer you can do this.

As you enter the kitchen, you repeat, “Will Joscelin be back today?”

Phèdre looks up at you and smiles, the exact same way she has for the past twenty-four days, “Yes, he should arrive this afternoon.”

You hold in a sigh.

On the fiftieth day, you sneak out your window without playing to the script, saddle your horse, and ride into the countryside. Joscelin’s meant to be coming—you wonder if he’s living the same day over and over too, riding for grueling hours only to wake and find he’s made no progress at all. Perhaps if you meet him, you’ll escape from this absurdity.

As you leave the city limits, your heart twinges; Phèdre will worry when she finds you missing. She’s worried after your temper these past couple of months, too, but you haven’t been able to explain your mercurial moods. How do you explain the unreality of living the same day over and over when no one else seems to have any idea it’s happening? She smiles the same way every morning, and it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore the way it digs into your skin.

Finding Joscelin will ease that, you’re sure.

The rain soaks through your cloak and riding leathers, streaming off your horse as he stamps through the churning muck below. You keep wiping the water from your eyes, but it does nothing to clear your vision: the countryside is blurred with rain, grim and foggy, and you keep thinking you hear another rider approaching, but it proves to be nothing but your own echo over and over.

You ride for hours. You ride until muscles you didn’t know you had are burning. You ride through a town, then another, and another, before you realise you have no idea how far you’ve gone, or what time it is. You dig in your heels and spur your mount on, until he’s too exhausted to even walk, and you’re too exhausted to hold the reins.

You fall from the saddle, boneless, and lay on your back in the mud, staring up into the still-falling rain. You know now, that Joscelin isn’t here. Joscelin will never be here.

For a moment, you’re grateful that the rain covers up your tears. Then, you sink into unconsciousness.

You wake to the sound of rain on the window.

You know it’s useless, but as the day goes on and on, you keep running away. You ride north, you ride south: you ride east and west and you even board a boat, hoping to find your way out of this sequence. You write letters to everyone you can think of but never receive responses.

You visit the same shops day after day and purchase the same things. You say the same words and eat the same foods. You collect a pile of stones in a glass bowl hidden within your wardrobe: curiously they never leave once you’ve placed them there.

You go to sleep anywhere but your own room—the Night’s Court, back alleyways, salons, outdoor tables at restaurants, on rooftops, in stables, anywhere, and you always wake, day after day, to the sound of rain on the window. You try the opposite, forcing yourself to stay awake for two days’ worth of hours to see if time will resume itself; instead, the day stretches on without ending, and no one seems to realise it’s lasted longer than it was meant to.

You stop counting after the 300th day. You hurl the glass bowl, stones and all, from your window, and watch it smash into a thousand glittering pieces against the back wall of the garden. The sound of its destruction is muffled in the rain.

Your exhaustion overwhelms you. Every day is rain upon rain upon rain.

Every day, there’s Phèdre’s smile tugging at a dark heat inside you, a heat that grows more and more insistent every day that Joscelin fails to arrive. Time passes without meaning until _nothing_ seems to have meaning anymore. 

You do everything there is to do. You eat every morsel in the city until it all starts to taste like ash in your mouth. You walk every inch of the cobbled streets, talk to every person there is to talk to, and buy every thing there is to buy at each and every one of the market stalls. It’s desperately boring, aggressively tedious, and every new identical day that you wake to rain on your window feels more and more like you’re being slowly strangled to death.

Despair swells inside you. You set yourself to reading every book there is to read until the day your tears wet the pages so thoroughly they stick together. “It doesn’t matter.” You whisper to yourself, crumpling the page between your fingers and then thrusting the book across the desk. “I’m never going to get out of here.”

Hearing the words aloud, even from your own lips, chills your blood with icy terror, and suddenly you’re on your feet, shoving past Phèdre’s gaze full of alarmed concern. Bareheaded and barefooted, you tear your way through the streets, running past the same stablehands and the same carriage and the same faces and the same sounds and the same miserable ravenous grey that’s swallowed you whole.

You don’t doubt that they think you’re mad—after all, this is just another normal day for them. They’ve no idea they’ve experienced it a thousand times already. They don’t know anything at all. You hear yourself bellow angrily, furiously, helplessly as you round a corner and find the clock tower just a square away from you.

You stop dead, then triple your previous pace. You elbow one person and bodily shove another: it doesn’t matter. None of this matters. With soaking wet hair streaming in your eyes, you reach the top of the stairs and hurl yourself against the door, breaking open onto a tiny platform behind the clock face. You can see your target: the next door. The one that will set you free.

Opening it gives that damnable rain access again, but this time, you’re laughing, because you’ve won, you’ve finally won, you’ll escape this hellish torment and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop you. Someone in the square below shouts and points up at you; faint but thudding footsteps echo up the stairs.

You jump out into the air. Then you’re falling, and as the ground rushes up to meet you, you fade into the sweet relief of darkness.

The next morning, you wake to the sound of rain on the window.

Your furious scream brings Phèdre running, but there’s no way you can tell her what’s happened. She gathers you in close to her chest and you cling tightly to her as the heat pulses through you in time with your pounding heart. Your tears soak into the fabric on her breast as you murmur yes, Darsanga, yes, a nightmare. You’re starting to forget which hell was worse.

You don’t know how long it’s been, now. In the mirror, your eyes are dull and lifeless, sunken deep into your face above dark circles that make you look older than you are. Your hair is longer, snarled and full of knots, and your skin is stretched over your bones like calfskin drying on a rack. You don’t remember when you quit eating. You don’t remember anything anymore.

All the remains inside you is a blaze of desire every time you see her.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” You demand from your own taut reflection. You draw your fingers down the sides of your face, digging in with the ragged stumps of nails you’ve ground away against your teeth. “Why are you _looking at me_?”

“Imri…”

The soft compassion in her voice tears a roar out of you and you surge across the kitchen, upsetting a side table on your way to seize her shoulders and slam her against the wall. She’s startled—she meets your eyes, and you see the wild expression on your face reflected in her eye’s floating red mote.

You draw your fist back and smack her in the face.

“None of this matters.” You hiss between clenched teeth, pulling back and readying another strike, “None of this means a fucking thing, because you’ll wake up tomorrow and forget, and I’ll wake up living the same fucking nightmare over and over and over.”

“Imri, what do you mean?” She’s still trying to reach you. Despite the tears pooling in her eyes as her skin starts to swell, despite the threat of another strike looming in your fist. She’s so damn compassionate you don’t think you can stand it anymore. How can she possibly understand what you’re going through? How can she share it with you, or bear it for you, or _resolve_ any of this?

You hit her again, and the third time you pull your fist back, you aim for her mouth, grabbing hold of her lower jaw the way you’d once seen the Markhagir do. You squeeze, but she doesn’t look afraid.

She doesn’t look afraid, and something about that enrages you even while it stokes the fire inside you. You’ll _break_ her. A choked sound curls out of your mouth in the shape of snarl: she has no strength like yours. She can’t endure what you’ve endured. She has no idea.

You shove her to the floor and tear apart her clothes, possessed by a demon strength you don’t recognise. You don’t care where it’s come from: all you care about is fucking her. She deserves it, doesn’t she? She won’t look at you now; her cheek is on the flagstone floor and her expression looks resigned. She’s probably disappointed in you, but you don’t care.

This isn’t her. You’re not even you. None of this is real.

You grapple with your breeches to free your cock. Already erect, it springs into view and just for a second, you’re shaken by the sight of it. It’s so… plain, and human.

Phèdre turns her head and the moment vanishes as you growl, “Don’t look at me.” You spread her lower lips with more harshness than is kind and plunge inside like a knife between ribs. You remember trying that—it didn’t kill you, so this won’t kill her.

You hear her breathe in like it’s hurt and this time you understand the noise your throat makes: laughter. It bubbles up from inside you, a sound you’d thought you’d lost, but it doesn’t sound like you. “Aren’t you supposed to enjoy it when it’s painful?”

Phèdre bites her lip and says nothing in reply, shifting just enough to spread her legs further. Her knees are on the stone floor, like yours, but she’s subject to you now, and you’re in control of this.

Yes, that’s it. You’ve finally taken control of this filthy, monstrous, idiotic nightmare. Up until now it’s just happened to you, but now it’s _yours_, and no one else will ever have the right to anything here. You pound into her until you feel her go slick around you, then you thrust even deeper, as far as you can go—like if you can find a place within her that even Joscelin has never touched, you’ll make her yours in truth.

That’s always been what you’ve wanted, isn’t it? There’s a little voice inside you that’s never really gone away or given up, and it’s triumphant now. You and her are cut from the same cloth: shaped differently, but the same on the inside. Deep inside.

You’re panting by the time you feel the rush of release inside her and your phallus goes limp, slipping weakly from her body to nod towards the floor.

Silence stretches until you become aware of your knees aching. Phèdre hasn’t spoken and you have nothing to say. You stand, fumbling across the table for a serviette to dab the semen from your cock. Your head aches.

“Are you finished, Imri?” She finally says, somehow damnably still all compassion, and your fury reignites like a flame touched with gas.

You haul her bodily from the floor and fling her onto the table on her back, holding her down and hissing. “I’ll never be finished. There’s no end to any of this.”

In the morning, you wake to birdsong and warm sunshine slanting across your bed.


End file.
